Friday, December 23, 2011

A boatload of boats

We are at the Walmart in Fort Pierce, Florida (map). I stayed here back in January while Louise was on her training cruise, and, just as then, there were quite a few rigs here when we arrived. Also just as then, a circle of lawn chairs was deployed between a pair of rigs, another candidate for my Walmart Hall-of-shame. The roving security patrol was over there as well, and if he didn't have a problem with it, then I suppose we shouldn't either.

Nevertheless, just as last time, I wanted to distance myself from this behavior and so we rolled over to the other section of the lot where the trucks normally park. This time, though, security came over and asked us to park over with the other rigs -- oh well. We still parked as far away as we could. We were the only ones still in the lot here when we got up this morning.

Yesterday we met up with our broker Curtis and his wife in Stuart and looked at five boats there before lunch. After a quick burger in town we piled into the car and headed north to Vero Beach to look at one final boat, for a total of six boats in one very full day. It was a great experience, because it allowed us to compare quite a few similar boats side by side, and we knocked a number of models right off our list.

Once again the boat that appealed to us the most was a Selene, in this case a 47. This one was older and in poorer condition than the one we looked at in New Bern a couple months ago, and yet carries the same asking price, so it's not really a contender, but it was interesting to see a different example of the same model. We really think that if a Selene 43-48 in decent shape comes along at the right price, we will snap it up, but at this writing we still have not found it.

We still have a couple of boat models on our "to see" list, including a post-1990 DeFever 49 pilothouse, and maybe an Ocean Alexander Classico 430 or 460, but there are no available examples of those on the east coast at the moment.

This morning we will get our shopping done here in the store (no point in going in there in the evening the week before Christmas) and then head north to Vero Beach. With any luck, we'll be able to squeeze into a parking spot near our friends' house there for a few days.

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